


i'll always be there

by mollykor



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Injury Recovery, Love, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 04:54:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29308365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mollykor/pseuds/mollykor
Summary: They rescued her. She was back within his reach, and he fully intended to keep it that way. He would never let go of her again.
Relationships: Katrina Cornwell/Original Universe Gabriel Lorca
Kudos: 5





	i'll always be there

He looked down at her, so frail and helpless on the bed, her bony, discoloured limbs poking out from her hospital gown. The tears collected in his eyes with every mechanical wheeze of the ventilator keeping her alive, clicking on and off, the torture not even leaving her with the ability to breathe on her own. Gabriel wanted to scream at he unfairness of it all, he would’ve gladly taken all her suffering and ten times that for himself if it meant that she wouldn’t be lay there standing on the precipice of death. 

He took his seat back in the chair next to her bed, and picked up her small hand in both of his own, cupping it gently and rubbing circles into it before squeezing it tightly in one hand, the other laying uselessly at his side as the tears rolled freely down his cheek. Her chest rose and fell in an even rhythm, almost robotic in the uniformity of the artificial inhales and exhales, her emaciated ribs showing through the thin blue material of the blanket. In this position, you could’ve almost mistaken her to be asleep if you didn’t know any better, grey eyes shut and head tilted slightly to the left. 

He glanced down at the atrophied muscles of her legs, but didn’t dwell on them for too long, her chance of ever walking unassisted again slim. The first time he heard those figures, he had nodded and pretended to be ok, but that night he had cried quietly into his hands, as if he would wake her from being too loud. Gabriel reminisced on their third or fourth date when they had gone walking in the mountains together. They had hiked to the top, laughing and chatting the whole way up, and then sat there and talked some more until nightfall when the stars had come out. Then they had curled up around one another, the cool breeze rustling their hair, and watched the meteors, wishing on a few shooting stars and drinking whiskey to keep themselves warm on the inside, feeling fuzzy. That night had ended in one of the best ways he could’ve thought of, and they had barely been able to walk back down the mountains, tumbling and giggling the whole way down, and in the end Gabriel had Kat on his back with her head rested on his shoulder. 

The lines of tears had dried into little more than salt by the time he had left his reverie, but Kat was still blissfully knocked out and unaware. In a way, he was scared for her to wake up and see what had happened. The war was damn near lost, the Klingons taking what they pleased and leaving Starfleet to scramble in their wake of destruction, and Kat would not be happy about that. He laughed thinking about all the strategies she would list off, asking about protocols and preventative measures so as to not be caught unawares. He would have to tell her most of it to put her at ease he reasoned, but he dreaded tell her the news about her recovery, how she might never walk again, how her legs were that badly injured and cracked.

There was also no saying what her mental state would be. Hell, he didn’t know if she would even remember him, and that was possibly the scariest thought of all. He could deal with her never being able to walk again, he would always be there with her to help her, but if she had forgotten all the times they had together, Gabriel didn’t know if he could stand that. It was obvious that she would have some form of PTSD, you could tell that from her injuries and the 2 months she had survived Klingon torture for, and coupled with the fact that it wasn’t her first rodeo with them. He remembered all those nights she had let him cry into her shoulder, kept her arms wrapped around him until his sobs subsided into shaky breaths and shaky hands clasped around her own. The way she had acted as his rock for so many months after what had happened to him, silently letting him cry or talk for as long as he needed, never once pushing him to do or say anything, letting him set the pace of everything. He vowed to do the same, she was there for him when he needed her most, so it was only right that he would be there for her in her darkest days. He almost felt her soft hands on his back, softly smoothing circles into the tense muscles there as she had done for the weeks to follow the accident. He brushed his thumb over her now angular hands, every knuckle jutting out almost unnaturally as his finger ran over them, feeling the valleys in-between the mountains.

Gabriel gently placed her hand back on her bed, lying there limp like the rest of her body. Burying his face in his own hands, the tears fell once agin, and he mentally scolded himself for crying so much, he wasn’t a child. Her parents had come to see her, not long after she had come in, to see their daughter lay malnourished and little more than a skeleton. They had held onto each other tight, the sight of their once strong young admiral reduced to nothing but skin and bones too much to bear. Once they had regained their composure, they had talked to Gabriel for a bit, asking how she was doing and the such, then offered their condolences and hugged him, and he had cried into her mother’s shoulder. He could see where Kat had gotten it from, her ability to be so calm and patient while someone was suffering, and he only hoped that he could be able to be as good as they had been to him when it was his turn to comfort. Her father, David, had placed a hand gently on his shoulder as his tears fell freely into the woman’s jacket, and had told him to stay strong, for all their sakes, but that it was also alright to cry. “Lord knows we all do sometimes”, he remembers David saying to him with as much of a chuckle as he could muster in the circumstances. They had left after that, but not before assuring them that he could call hem whenever he wanted if it was all getting too much. With the exception of the love that his Kat had given him, he doubted he had ever felt so loved in his life, his heart as hot as the heat of ten suns.

**Author's Note:**

> Well here's something I wrote earlier, enjoy I guess? Just finished season two of Star Trek Disco, and by god I think I cried for a solid half hour over Kat, she deserved so much better :( Anyways kudos and comments appreciated, have fun reading, live long and prosper and all that.


End file.
